Cable television systems typically have a capacity of approximately 100 individual frequency channels. These 100 frequency channels are analog channels, meaning that the video color and intensity information of each channel is a linear function of its respective vestigial sideband reduced carrier signal. Most of these channels are filled with full time programming of commercial television, pay television, and public interest television. Some of the few channels that remain are often used for a system known as pay-per-view.
Pay-per-view, as its name implies, is a service where the viewer of a program, typically pays for viewing a more or less single item which lasts for a predetermined period. Most pay-per-view programs last for just a few hours. Some sporting events, such as the Olympics, may last more than one day but are still billed as a single program. This is unlike a pay television channel where a subscriber pays a flat monthly fee and often does not know or watch all of the programs that are on the pay television channel each month. An example of a pay-per-view system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,191 entitled DIAL-UP TELEPHONE NETWORK EQUIPMENT FOR REQUESTING AN IDENTIFIED SELECTION, issued to Gordon et al, and assigned to the assignee hereof.
A pay-per-view system typically includes one program schedule channel and one or more viewing channels. The pay-per-view program schedule channel gives the starting times of the upcoming pay-per-view programs, the pay-per-view viewing channel in which the program will be carried, the viewing fee and ordering information. The program schedule channel may give some type of preview of the programs also. Each pay-per-view program is scheduled to start at a specific time on a specific channel. The program schedule for each pay-per-view viewing channel, and the schedule for the pay-per-view program schedule channel are predetermined, e.g. they are determined the previous day or the previous week. The subscriber has the choice of selecting one of the predetermined pay-per-view programs and incurring the viewing fee or not selecting pay-per-view, not being able to watch the program, and not incurring any fee. The subscriber does not have any other choices with respect to the pay-per-view programming distributed via the cable television system.
A problem that has plagued the pay-per-view service is scheduling programs that viewers will pay to watch. The pay-per-view diviners have not forecasted very well which programs the subscribers want. As a result, there are typically only four or five pay-per-view channels on a given neighborhood cable television system. Often these are divided up among recent movies, live events, and mature programming as the predetermined choices. The fact that there are still empty channels available on most community cable television systems indicates that pay-per-view revenues could grow if there was a better way to match up the programs that are available with what subscribers are willing to pay to watch.